Whoops, I Deleted My Life

When the ominous warnings started hitting my inbox a few months ago, I tried to ignore them. The emails contained none of the humor or playfulness of the early Gmail ethos. Instead, they were terse and vaguely threatening, seeming to channel the depressing spirit of financial collapse and austerity present everywhere around us. The subject line: “Your Gmail is almost out of storage.” The body, in essence: This is a shakedown—pay us a subscription fee in perpetuity, and we will continue granting you what we once promised would be free access to your own life and memories.